Negotiations On Site For Opawa High School

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30389, 13 March 1964, Page 12

Negotiations On Site For Opawa High School

About eight acres of land known as the Butler street reserve in Opawa may become the site for the new Opawa high school, depending on negotiations between the Education Department and the Christchurch City Council.

The reserve adjoins the large undeveloped area in the bend of the Heathcote river at Opawa which has been named Hanson’s Park It is a park in name only. Formerly a controlled rubbish tip. its level is still being raised with soil removed from other City Council jobs around the city. Mr P. G. Secular, the City Engineer, said yesterday that it would be many years before Hanson’s Park was developed because the council had no money to develop it. The area would have to b“ topsoiled, sown, and planted

with trees, and it would be a few years yet before it would have stopped settling. A start on the new secondary school —made necessary by the plan to separate the Christchurch Technical College day school from the rest of the college—is expected to be made in 1967, depending on acquisition of a site. The Butler street site was recommended to the department by the Post-primary Schools’ Council last October Since then the Ministry of Works had made several test bores and forwarded the results to the department If the Butler street area is not big enough for a secondary school, the Education Department and the City Council may agree on the development of Hanson’s Park itself to provide a joint public park and playing fields.